The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette

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Rachel Lindsay is a practicing attorney who once took the LSAT. And you, dear reader, are an aspiring attorney who will soon take the LSAT. Rachel Lindsay is also an aspiring married person, serving as the bachelorette on this season of The Bachelorette, the love story these depraved times deserve. And you, dear reader, may also be an aspiring married person? Either way, you definitely have at least a few things in common with Rachel. So every Tuesday, we’re going to be tracking Rachel’s romantic journey on The Bachelorette, and see what we can learn about love, loss, and the LSAT. Welcome to the Logical Rose-ning Section.

We pick up in the Bachelorette Man-sion, with our dudes still reeling from last week’s premiere episode. And so are we, frankly. I mean, so many mans, so many potential futures for Rachel. We get a little recap of the first night’s action with Chris Harrison. Other than the usual parade of squared-jawed white dudes with job titles that include some combination of the words “Consultant,” “Tech,” “Finance,” and “Senior,” we got a more diverse line-up of contestants with more interesting back stories than is typical for this show.

We got Josiah, who after a tragic childhood and a juvenile criminal conviction as a teenager, became a prosecutor at the very same district attorney’s office that once charged him with a crime. There’s Kenny, a father of a ten year-old girl and professional wrestler with the amazing stage name Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King. And then there’s Lucas … who says “Whaboom” a lot. Like so much. Anyone who watched this episode has definitely heard that exclamation enough times for a lifetime, so we’re not going to repeat that here again (also, he’s probably trademarked its use, and we don’t want any legal trouble here. Again, there are a bunch of attorney contestants this year, so we’re willing to guess that this is season is a little more litigious season than most). Also, Rachel was warned by a contestant from Nick’s season of The Bachelor that DeMario is not to be trusted, a warning that clearly had no meaning or implications for the following episode of television.

Anyway, Chris Harrison, still the nominal host of this program, shows up to see what these guys are thinking about Rachel. And these veritable Romeos drop romantic bon mots like, “You look at Rachel, and you’re just like, struck” and “She’s not only beautiful, but she walks … she smells so extreme … she smells so good.”

This is all a pretext to introduce the very first group date of this season. The contestant with the most extreme Richard Spencer haircut ever reads the cards of the contestants that will go on the very first, very normal date where eight guys vie for the attention of one girl during a highly structured activity set-up by producers. Richard Spence-hair reads off the names Dean, Jack Stone the law student, Jonathan, Blake, Iggy, the aforementioned Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King, Fred, and Whablam guy. The card reads, “I’m looking for husband material – Rachel.”

Onto the first group date! Rachel throws a barbecue with a sad portable grill and, like, two burgers. Realizing that there is no food to eat, Rachel and the guys decide to play a little touch football, with Rachel playing the quarterback position. Rachel runs an up-tempo spread office akin to Chip Kelly. Looks like she wants to be Marcus Married-ota (sorry).

During this, Whablooey annoys everyone with his Whablooey-ing. He especially annoys aspiring drummer boy Blake, who apparently knows something about this guys past. Drummer boy Blake looks like he is going to do something really dumb like confront Rachel about the guy. Which would actually play into WhamBamThankYouMa’am’s favor. The contestants who make it their sole mission to take down another contestant never go further than a two-on-one date on this show. Just ask Taylor from last season of The Bachelor. So while Blake is playing checkers, Wattaburger is playing … well definitely not chess. Maybe he’s also just playing checkers, but he’s slightly better at checkers.

After football, these guys are put to the task of seeing who is the “most husband material.” We are introduced to a competition hosted by none other than Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Kutcher is wearing a t-shirt with “Trophy Husband,” and they are described as “the most perfect couple in Hollywood.” Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson would like a word.

These guys are put into a relay race where they have to do dad tasks like change a diaper, strap on a Babybjörn, vacuum a carpet, de-clog a sink, and set a table. At each stage of the race, the contestant in last place will be eliminated. Kutcher describes the race as testing the contestants’ skills in “husbandry,” which doesn’t actually mean “the act of being a husband,” as Kutcher suggests. Unless crops and animals are your wife, I suppose.

Iggy, who is wearing a dope gold chain, is eliminated immediately, mostly for trying to care for the baby doll as if it were an actual sentient human being. He looks sad in the “dog house,” which is where they put the loser, not-fit-for-Rachel husbands. As these dummies are scrambling around treating the babies like a relay baton, I’m hoping Rachel pulls a King Solomon and gives the win to Iggy with the dope chain, for not treating the stand-in for their flesh and blood progeny like a maniac.

The race ends up as a two-man competition between Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King and Wham!Boom as the last two. Wampum is literally drowning the baby as he’s trying to de-clog the sink. As they’re sprinting to the end, Waikiki gives an illegal stiff arm to Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King, who, let’s reminds ourselves, is like twice the size of WaxOnWaxOff and is an honest-to-goodness professional wrestler (on an independent circuit, but still). Wahlberg, despite eventually winning the race, is not long for this world.

After the race, the contestants go to a creepy-looking vintage store in North Hollywood that looks the set of a B-52s video. Rachel is super not impressed by these dudes at this stage of the date. Wallabang reads a terrible poem. Fred, who was a child Rachel supervised at summer camp as a child, ties to convince her to stop seeing him as the bad little boy from summer camp. Maybe stop talking summer camp, dude. Jack Stone the law student has a v. creepy posture when talking to her, head cocked and leaned in, like a snake about to strike its prey. Rachel is, perhaps instinctively, repulsed. Iggy with the dope chain does not have a dope chain of questions, sweating profusely through questions like “So career-wise, what are the prospects?” Blake apparently used to live with Whack-a-Mole’s ex-girlfriend. Brings it up with Rachel. Rachel is literally ready to use a peremptory challenge to axe all of these guys, looks like she literally couldn’t care.

Somehow, Dean does the best. He was, as a reminder, the guy that said “I’m ready to go black, and never go back,” when introduced to Rachel. They go into depth on his use of this dated, problematic cliché. He gets the group date rose. Dean has a clean-cut white face, a slightly-past-its due-date haircut, a tasteful plaid button up, and will clearly say whatever the producers tell him to, as evidenced by his “go black” comment. He seems like a composite of every successful Bachelorette contestant ever. Until this is disconfirmed, I’m just going to assume he’s the first BachelorBot designed and manufactured by the producers for the inevitable event that the U.S. depletes its reserves of attractive, straight business consultants and software salesmen who are really into Crossfit and are eager to go on TV.

Meanwhile, Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King is awesome. In describing the bubbling feud between Blake and Whackadoodle, he gives a great definition of circular reasoning, and drops a little inside knowledge of some of Los Angeles’s worst tourist traps: “Listen, I’m a pro wrestler. I know all about white dudes acting crazy. But everybody is just talking around in circles. So if y’all want to get on the merry-go-round, take your ass to Santa Monica and get on the merry-go-round. You white dudes are kind of bugging right now.” Kenny, you’re great, but leave the explaining of logical fallacies to us, buddy. We don’t go into your workplace and tell you how to properly execute a diving double axe handle.

Afterwards, we have a kind of boring interlude with Rachel’s one-on-one date with Peter, who looks like a young Viggo Mortensen. Piggo Mortensen and Rachel, accompanied by Rachel’s dog Copper, take a private jet to Palm Springs. Copper is adorably wearing a cast on his front leg. They go to a Coachella pool party for dogs called Bark-fest. They discuss his parents’ impression of going on The Bachelorette, their gap teeth, and therapy. He gets the date rose, and will live to fight another Sentinel. They then watch fireworks with Copper, who is probably terrified.

Finally, we get to the second group date. The date card reads, simply, “Swish.” Will, Jamey, Diggy, Alex, Adam, Richard Spence-hair, Matt, Eric, Josiah, and DeMario. The show could have just been making up half of these people and I would have had no idea. They could have told me the second date was with Chet, Dirk, Hologram Chris Pine, D’Angelo from the “Brown Sugar” video, Tommy, and Deepak Chopra and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

DeMario is the star of this date, which is set up with his quote, “You can either sink with the fishes, or swim to shore. We’re going to see who’s built Ford ToughTM.” DeMario. First of all, the date card says “Swish.” It literally could not be any more obvious you’re playing basketball. The only alternative date would be a group discussion of whether Kanye should have kept Swish as the title to The Life of Pablo and whether the original tracklist would have made for a more cohesive album. I don’t know where this water metaphor came from. Second, fishes don’t just sink. It’s not like they’re just born and then immediately drown and die and sink to the bottom of the ocean. That’s not how fishes work, DeMario. Third, a Ford truck would probably be very bad at swimming to shore, mostly because it is a vehicle made for land and has, as far we know, no person volition or autonomy. So that’s an inapt comparison.

The guys show up to play basketball in their best ath-leisure. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shows up to teach them the Skyhook. Some of the guys are laughably bad at basketball. Some of the guys are better. There seems to be an inversely proportional relationship between height of hair and basketball skills with these guys. DeMario can dunk. He drunks on Rachel, very disrespectfully.

They then play a real game to a “packed house,” which apparently refers to a high school gymnasium mostly filled with extras they found on Craigslist. The producers take Chris Harrison out of his mothball-strewn box to introduce the teams. DeMario’s game is a little like Boogie Cousins. He takes over the second half of the game to lead his team to victory. A group date rose is all but assured
But after the game, a girl named Lexi shows up, completely unexpectedly and unplanned by any producers, surely. Lexi informs Rachel that DeMario was still dating Lexi up until literally hours before DeMario showed up to meet Rachel on the show. Rachel goes straight into attorney-mode and holds a deposition with DeMario and Lexi. DeMario, acting on advice of counsel, denies pretty much everything, claiming that he hadn’t initiated any contact with Lexi. Lexi starts going off, addressing the camera and swearing on the graves of her father and the (future … we hope) graves of the kittens sleeping on her bed that DeMario is lying. Rachel, ever the attorney, looks at the evidence. She sees messages on Lexi’s phone indicating that DeMario was still trying to get it, and promptly dismisses him from the show. Case closed!

After the game, the remaining contestants go to Clifton’s Cafeteria in Downtown Los Angeles. They hang out next to a big tree. Rachel, shaken from the DeMario experience, calls DeMario a “dirty, dirty dog.” The editors smash cut to a taxidermied fox, which is like, close enough I guess? The guys on this group date, on the whole, are much smoother than the losers on the first. Both Josiah and Eric get some kissy face time in. Josiah snags the group date rose.

Somehow, after two hours after Bachelorette-ing, we barely even have time for the rose ceremony. During the cocktail party, Bryan the Chiropractor, Iggy with the dope chain, Jamey the Anonymous, and Summer Camp Fred are getting in some one-on-one time when DeMario arrives, wanting to speak to Rachel one last time. Chris Harrison, again de-mothballed, asks Rachel if she wants to talk to him. Rachel, wearing a dress that looks like it has literal armor on it, feels bulletproof enough to address him. All the other guys talk about wanting to kick DeMario’s ass. TO BE CONTINUED …

What we learned about love

To find love, it’s better to spout a mildly offensive cliché based on your beloved’s race than it is to have a massively annoying catchphrase that’s not based on anything. Also, a love of dogs helps.

What we learned about loss

If you’re going to dunk on your future wife, you probably shouldn’t have a current bae who is willing to show your text messages on national television.

What we learned about the LSAT

Not very much! A cursory Google search into what score Rachel got on her LSAT didn’t reveal much. We will report back details in this progressing story as they become available.